


Jailbreak

by Lesca Fenix (lescafenix)



Category: Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: F/M, Post-Lightning Returns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:33:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4787408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lescafenix/pseuds/Lesca%20Fenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been months since the rebirth onto the new world, and Lightning stops to visit Hope. They're both prisoners of their own making.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jailbreak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NightsMistress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightsMistress/gifts).



> I'd love a story set in the new world, preferably addressing some of the crazy things that happened in the series. I'm fine with them either being either shipped or in a relationship (I do ship it but I would also love a platonic relationship as well) but I'm really interested in the intense bond that the two of them have with one another. What does their happy ending look like? Is it something that comes easily, or do they have to search for it? Do they have to search for each other as well, or have they always known where the other is? And what are the aftereffects of ... well, literally everything in the game?

Hope is well aware of the silhouette leaning in the doorway of his office, but can’t quite bring himself to look up. In some ways it’s quite familiar, this slightly distant presence, hovering just out of reach, unknowable. There are a lot of questions floating through his mind as he idly flips through the report but doesn’t process it. He can’t voice any of them for fear of them emerging as an attack.

_It’s been months since the Return. Where have you been?_

_Why haven’t you contacted anyone?_

“You’re a hard woman to find.” He finally opts for stating the facts. As a researcher, he learned a long time ago that the facts could never betray you, never abandon you, never disappoint. They just were what they were. No expectations. “A young reporter has been by twice, asking questions about you.”

“About me?” Lightning asks. Her face is inscrutable in the shadows of the doorway. No data to be gathered there. “Sorry about that.”

Hope has always wondered if Lightning truly means her apologies, or if they’re just platitudes said because that is just what you say when you’ve hurt someone, failed to meet expectations.

“I suppose it’s natural she’d find me first. I’m easy to find. I’m always in one place.” That was supposed to be funnier than it came out, but Lightning doesn’t laugh.  The silence is oppressive, and Hope continues to gently probe by way of attempted humor.

“Sometimes I get so engrossed in a project that I fall asleep at my desk. Can you believe that?” His laugh is forced, but he’s committed. Why is this so painful? Why can’t he find the emotion inside him to be happy to see her, at long last? In many ways, Lightning feels like a stranger, one he’s only read about in a news story like the one that girl is writing.

Then again, in many ways Hope’s life feels like that, too.

“So you’ve gone from being Bhunivelze’s prisoner to your own, here.”

Hope’s neck pops painfully as he wheels to face her incredulously.

_Who are you to judge my life choices?_

“I’m hardly a prisoner,” he scoffs, as though offended by the idea.  “I simply know where I’m comfortable. Where I’m useful. There’s no shame in having a career, Lightning. A calling. It’s respectable, and everyone I care about knows exactly where to find me, which is frankly more than can be said for some.”

Those last words tumble out with far more force than Hope intended or expected. Lightning seems to be taken aback as well, judging from the look on her face. Maybe it's the sudden surfacing of anger from a well within himself he had heretofore not realized existed, but Lightning almost seems contrite.

“Yeah. It’s not going to sound good however I explain it.” she sighs and gestures, then lets her hand fall limply.

“Try me.”

She rides the ensuing silence for as long as she can, but Hope can see it’s wearing on her. Finally she sighs and gestures again, almost defeatedly.

“You want to talk about prisons. I think we both started building prisons long before we got here. We were building internal prisons back on Cocoon, running from the Sanctum. We then had them finished for us by others. Etro. Bhunivelze." She finally raises her eyes, enough for Hope to see the conflict in their aquamarine depths. She’s hardly a resolved Savior or grimly single-minded soldier here.

He doesn’t like where this is going. His next words are measured and tense. “So what are you saying, that we’ve never gotten out of them?”

"Hope, when you’ve been made and remade, both by yourself and by gods, how do you know what's real about you any more? How do you know if research really is your passion any more, or if it's just what you’re so used to doing? How do I know my thoughts are my own, my likes and dislikes are my own-- any of it? How do you?"

“So that’s why you’ve avoided everyone since the Return?” Hope looked around his cluttered office and wondered is walls were indeed his own way to isolate himself from having those very things tested. He was 27 years old – or 527, or any other number, really, if one wanted to argue enough – and the thought of starting anew with no fixed concept of himself was daunting to say the least.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what my truth is. Maybe I'm afraid the minute anyone knows where and how to find me, I'll become responsible for someone or something again." Lightning shrugs again and for the first time steps into Hope’s office to perch a hip on a report-laden table.

"Including Serah," Hope noted. "You haven't visited her or Snow."

"I've never been what Serah needs, and I'm certainly not going to be now.” There’s no bitterness in her words – rather fear and resignation. "I don't want to be needed, to be counted on by anyone. All I’ve ever done is let people down when it matters. Even now, we've created this new world and people are already trying to destroy it and each other. I can't help but feel like that's because of some failing on my part."

"If we've learned anything from all we've been through, it's that you can't save people who don't want to be saved.” He wheels his chair over to where she is sitting and reaches out a conciliatory hand to cover hers where it rests on the table. "Maybe it's time you just worry about saving yourself."

Her laugh is decidedly bitter. "From what? Where's the enemy? Who do I kill? Do you know how itchy it makes me to travel without a weapon in hand? I've been fighting things one way or another since I was sixteen years old, Hope. You'd think I'd be glad to be done with it, but it never gave me time to learn to be good at anything else."

"That's what this is, then. A chance for you to become good at something else." Lightning's conflicted expression urges him on, and he offers, "If you want that chance, anyway."

"I don't know what I want. I'm not used to choosing anything. In the Guardian Corps, we followed orders. Then I was bound by duty to Etro. Then I followed Bhunivelze's orders. It was always what someone else wanted. How do you even live a happy life, Hope? How do you find happiness, decide what you want to do each morning, figure out what your life's work will be?" Lightning shifts back onto the table and leans back against a stack of manuscripts nearly as tall as she is.

"Do you think I have the answer to that?" Hope’s laugh is tight, almost forced, and it hurts his throat. "Why do you think I'm here, taking my direction from my research? You're a braver person than I am to even consider doing something different."

"And that is what? I don't know what I like. I don't know what I'm interested in. All I can think about is contingency plans and following the news of this ridiculous war. Maybe I do just need to pick up a gunblade again and step in before things grow even more ridiculous."

"Your complete lack of enthusiasm should tell you all you need to know about that idea," this time the laugh comes easily, and Hope rises to his feet to meet her eye-to-eye for the first time.

"So then what?” she’s wary, but there’s a hesitant hopefulness. It’s something to hold on to – if the world can’t be saved from itself, maybe a couple regular, not-special, completely lost people on it could be saved from themselves.

"Here's an idea. Why not stop traveling. Find somewhere to settle down and try just being Lightning? Try being with yourself for a while. Take it day by day and see what it is you like. Think about it as training for a mission, if you have to. Mission: Lightning."

"More like, Mission: Claire," she says, the name coming off her tongue hesitantly, as though it were a new prison she might have to construct, rather than the scared, hopeless young girl that the battlement called Lightning was constructed around. It’s encouraging, even though he knows better than to take liberties with it yet.

"Mission: whatever you want it to be. But it doesn’t have to be a solo mission. You’ve got family. You’ve got people waiting for you.”

"Serah. Again.” Lightning crosses her arms across her chest and fidgets on the corner of the table, as though ready to bolt for the door.

"Not just Serah,” he rebuts quickly. “Serah, and Snow, and Sazh, and Fang, and Vanille.” A pause. “And me.”

“That’s quite a list.”

“Well, when is a better time to start rebuilding a relationship than when you're rebuilding you?" It’s a good question, and one Hope realizes with a chilling jolt goes more than one way. He glances around the shadowy room, from the stacks of papers to the woman whose soft white garments make her nearly blend into them, as ephemeral and vulnerable as any  of them. Without her gleaming armor, without her uniform, without her sword, who was she?

And who was he to want to know?

“Light, from the moment we returned, we’ve all taken pains to stay separate from each other. Through my research I have been able to keep tabs on everyone, and I have been in contact at least once with everyone. Never once has someone asked me to connect them with any of the others. Are we all trying to forget that everything we went through happened? Are we so desperate to put those hundreds--thousands of years behind us that we're also willing to forsake those bonds we made?" His voice is barely a whisper when he finishes, and he’s risen to his feet and closed the space between him and Lightning.

Hope knows the tingling that prickles beneath his skin when he’s on to a discovery, and the closer he leans to Lightning, the more powerful it becomes. In many ways they are strangers to each other, people made anew. But because of that, they’re equals. That in and of itself is new and exciting. Something to explore.

“You busy now?” Lightning asks, her eyes darting downward for a moment before returning to Hope’s.

The room is suddenly hot and sticky--or is that the back of his neck?

“Me? No.”

She holds her hand out, palm up. “Then let’s go outside.”


End file.
